Daily archive
Terra Tempus Daily #106 — September 14, 2026
These are the 5 rounds every player got on September 14, 2026, with the answers and the history behind them. This day is finished, so nothing here spoils a puzzle you can still play — today’s Daily Challenge is a different five events.
Not enough completed runs on this day to report an average without singling out an individual player’s score — we publish one from 5 finishers up.
Round 1
Battle of the Kalka River
Battle of the Kalka River · 1223 · Medieval
Why there: The clash occurred on the open Pontic steppe near a river draining toward the Sea of Azov because this flat grassland was ideal cavalry country and lay along the western frontier where the fragmented Rus' principalities bordered the nomadic Cuman lands the Mongols were probing.
Why then: It happened in 1223 because Genghis Khan's newly unified Mongol Empire had just crushed Khwarezm, freeing Subutai and Jebe to lead a long-range reconnaissance raid into a Rus' still divided among rival princes with no unified command to resist them.
- The Battle of the Kalka River (1223) saw a Mongol reconnaissance force under Subutai and Jebe destroy a combined Rus'-Cuman army.
- The captured Rus' princes were reportedly executed after the battle.
- It was the first major clash between the Mongols and the Rus' principalities, foreshadowing the full invasion two decades later.
Round 2
Battle of Lützen
Battle of Lützen · 1632 · Early Modern
Why there: Lützen sits on the flat plains of Saxony in central Germany, a strategic crossroads where Swedish and Imperial armies maneuvered for control of the Protestant heartland and its supply routes during the Thirty Years' War.
Why then: By 1632 Sweden's Gustavus Adolphus had intervened in the sprawling religious-political war engulfing the Holy Roman Empire, deploying newly modernized mobile artillery and combined-arms tactics that made his campaign the decisive Protestant counteroffensive of that decade.
- The Protestant king's army held the field but he was killed in the battle (1632).
- It was fought in the same region as his great victory of the previous year.
- His death deprived the Protestant alliance of its most capable military leader.
Round 3
Withheld from the archive
This round was played, but we do not republish it here. Recent events involving mass civilian casualties are excluded from our public archive under our content policy, whatever their place in the day’s puzzle.
Round 4
Withheld from the archive
This round was played, but we do not republish it here. Recent events involving mass civilian casualties are excluded from our public archive under our content policy, whatever their place in the day’s puzzle.
Round 5
Battle of Red Cliffs
Battle of Red Cliffs · 208 · Antiquity
Why there: The battle unfolded along the Yangtze, the wide southern river that formed a natural defensive barrier where the southern warlords could exploit their naval strength and force Cao Cao's northern, land-based army to fight on unfamiliar water.
Why then: With the Han dynasty's central authority collapsed in 208, rival warlords carved up the realm, and Cao Cao's bid to conquer the south before consolidation could set in made this the decisive moment that fixed the coming Three Kingdoms division.
- The Battle of Red Cliffs (208 CE) saw the allied forces of Sun Quan and Liu Bei defeat the much larger army of Cao Cao.
- Cao Cao's ships were reportedly linked together, making them vulnerable to a devastating fire attack.
- The battle paved the way for the Three Kingdoms period and is dramatized in the novel 'Romance of the Three Kingdoms.'
Every Daily Challenge is five real events, one from each of five different eras, identical for every player, scored up to 10,000 points a round on how close you land in space and in time. Read how to play, see where the events come from, or play today’s.
